by T. F. Walsh
Some evenings, Izzy scrolled through her contacts and stared at the name “Curtis Keene” and held her thumb over the entry. Always, she’d smash the home button on her cell, return to the main screen, and toss away the phone. Curtis never called or texted either and, gradually, a painful knot grew beside her heart. Izzy had danced through physical hurts and had lived with an unyielding welter of emotional pain. What was waking up with one more ache to her? As Rutger Hauer once said, “tears in the rain.”
That knot wouldn’t become a problem until after the production.
• • •
Glazier Studio’s performances of The Nutcracker went off without a hitch. Parents cooed over the younger students in their snowflake costumes and loved it when the little flakes went off choreography for a wave at Mom and Dad or a blown kiss. Camera flashes went off like fireworks and blinded Izzy, who peeped at the crowd from the wings. The older pupils showcased their skills to standing ovations. Amanda and Travis, her Sugar Plum Fairy and Cavalier, were a hit. The Glazier Studio raked in a healthy profit that Izzy had decided to split with the local animal shelter. Reps and volunteers from the organization attended each of the four shows, manned adoption and volunteer information desks, and accepted donations. The partnership required a frenzy of last-minute coordinating, but was worth it. When Izzy dropped off the organization’s check, she prepped herself for the cacophony of barking and sent up her mental armor. She discovered she didn’t need it. Instead of terror, a persistent longing stretched in her breast. The dogs yapping at their kennel doors and the acrid scent of animal made her wistful.
She wondered how Nook fared and rolled her eyes when she thought of Petey.
When had that happened?
• • •
“Well, howdy stranger.” Melinda spun in her desk chair and faced Curtis when he entered the lodge’s main building. “Haven’t seen you in a quadrillion years.”
“Lies. I saw you three days ago,” Curtis said, giving his feet an extra swipe on the welcome mat before letting the front door swing shut behind him. The construction schedule weighed fifty pounds. He’d come to kick back and prune the list of “dones,” sick of flipping through page after wrinkled, crinkling page of annotated and crossed off projects. So far, they hadn’t deviated from the original timetable. The February grand opening was right on track. Just in time for Valentine’s Day. Curtis harrumphed and flung himself backside first on the couch.
Clear-Skies zipped back and forth in his chest like a comet, pacing. The wolf spirit had been at it since the day after his ascension to Alpha. They were both restless. Curtis pretended he didn’t know why.
“You passed by my desk three days ago, but I don’t think we’ve said one word to each other since Izzy bailed.”
Curtis cringed and his teeth squeaked when they ground together. “Don’t — ”
“Use the I word? Why not? That’s why you’re all grouchy and not talking to anyone.”
“That’s not the only reason why.” He rapped the burgeoning clipboard with the back of his hand. “I’m responsible for all this now. With Thomas and Gerome gone, I have to supervise everything and get a handle on the property manager stuff. Thomas used to handle all that.”
“What a load of crap. You know what he did. You just weren’t doing it.”
Lin was right, but Curtis wasn’t telling her that. When it came down to it, taking over management of the lodge wouldn’t be hard. Cold-blooded killer he may have been, but Thomas had kept thorough and meticulous records. Anything Curtis didn’t understand about the property manager’s duties came clear going over archived files. When the full staff came trickling back in January, he’d be more than ready. Surprisingly, it excited him.
Mine. Everything’s mine. Except …
“If you want her back so bad you oughta call her instead of camping out at Pat’s Pub and holing up at the bottom of a pint every night.”
“I go for the pool, too.” But Curtis’s toes curled at the thought of a thick, dark Guinness. Dinner schminner. Who needed dinner with a dozen pints warming your belly? Images of delicious, tempting lager jostled out of Curtis’s brain, replaced with the dark fringe of Izzy’s lashes against a pale cheek, the way she stood so very still, so straight and silent. The way her face looked when he made her come, almost pained at first, then surprised, eyes closed and her shining, pink lips in the sweetest “O.”
“And I can’t call her anyhow.” It was useless avoiding Izzy-talk with Lin. The girl never let him fucking slide and she never sugar-coated anything. She’d make some man miserable some day.
“You’re just a big ’fraidy wolf.” Melinda sniffed and her chair creaked.
Ah, finally she was wrong and Curtis jumped on it. Straightening on the couch, he leaned one shoulder over its back like a truck driver and pointed the pen he’d slipped from his front pocket at her.
“No, see, I’m not afraid. I’d love nothing more than chasing that woman down and changing her mind.” He scratched his chin with the pen and grinned. “Lots of times. I’d love to call her up and say, ‘Izzy, I miss you. Throw me a bone.’ But I can’t ’cause you know what she’d say after I was done making her feel … whatever it is women think. Complete, right?”
Rolling her eyes, Lin said, “Ignoring your sexism, what would the Izzy-in-question say?”
Curtis altered his tone in a nasal, falsetto parody of Izzy’s. “But what if my feelings aren’t my feelings? You called me and asked me to come over. What if it’s your Alpha-ness making me love you.” He cut the impression. “And then she runs off and we’re at square one again, and I don’t get two hundred bucks each time I pass it.”
Lin stared at him, one rusty eyebrow hooked up. “Izzy loves you?”
“Naturally.” Curtis buffed his nails on his shirt.
“She said that?”
Izzy had, hadn’t she? No, wait. He’d told her, but she hadn’t said anything. His pause didn’t escape Melinda.
“Oh man, you said the ‘L’ word first and she didn’t say anything?” Melinda rocked back in her chair.
“You’re making it sound bad. We were together together before she left. Women don’t do that in those stressful situations unless they’re gone on you. She just got confused afterwards. That’s all.”
“Yeah, or, she got freaked out by everything that went on and was looking for whatever stability she could get her hands on and you were the closest, ah, solid thing.”
Curtis almost dropped the pen. “You know what? Stop talking because you have no idea what you’re talking about. Izzy loves me and I love Izzy, and if you love something you let it the fuck go like a fucking butterfly and then it comes back to you and lands on your shoulder.”
“Or it jumps in the sack with a new butterfly to forget the old one.”
Fists tight, Curtis hunkered down on the sofa. There wouldn’t be any new butterflies. Everywhere he’d touched Izzy, kissed her, he’d put up a little Curtis flag claiming her in the name of him. No one could replace him, could they?
Something wet and sticky dribbled onto Curtis’s clenched right hand. He’d snapped his pen in half. Red ink stained his fist.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Christmas and New Year’s came and went. Izzy spent the holidays with her parents and their friends. Her knot had graduated to a canker, fed with the guilt and depression she crammed down along with hors d’oerves and booze. The growth seeped acid and breathing around it hurt. It crowded her lungs and squished her heart. Sometimes it swelled and lodged in her throat and brought tears. Those moments passed.
At her parents’ Christmas party, everyone was excited at the prodigal daughter’s return. Guests’ faces — distant aunts and uncles, people her Mom and Dad knew from their social clubs — zoomed too close to her own, right out of the bumping, companionable crowd like the disembodied and winged he
ads of vengeful spirits. Their teeth, yellowed with caffeine, nicotine, snapped and chattered at her. Their mouths were traps that snared her in conversations she couldn’t follow. On one of her refill trips, she passed her mother, who bumped her playfully with her hip.
“What’s that you’re drinking, sweetheart, Amaretto? The palette of a five-year-old, I swear,” she chided and gave Izzy’s cheek a feathery kiss, leaving a waxy stamp of lipstick behind.
A child’s palette.
The thought sailed over the mellow tones of jazz, the chink of ice in a swirled glass, the clink of champagne flutes whose bubbling, pale gold liquid caught the soft candle light and refracted it like a ray of sunshine.
That day, the sunlight caught flecks of gold in Alan’s hair when he ran ahead of me …
Like the man with his back to Izzy just ahead. The man speaking with her father. Was it …
Someone jostled her arm and a slap of the deep amber — a flash of Curtis’s wolf eyes — liquor in her glass sloshed onto her hand. Time fixed itself.
“Oh, excuse me, dear. You’re Delia’s daughter, aren’t you? What’s new with you?”
“Did you know,” Izzy slurred to the steely haired woman in the garnet-colored suit, “that Werewolves exist?”
“I’m sorry, dear. Did you say ‘Werewolves?’”
Izzy held her prosthetic to her lips, preventing further speech and uproarious laughter. Hearing the word “Werewolves” parroted back at her struck her as absolutely hysterical. What was she? Crazy?
Nope. Drunk. Very, very drunk.
Slugging back the rest of her drink, Izzy made a hasty exit, climbing to her old room and throwing the covers from her old bed over her head. She did not sleep. She waited. Waited for the guests’ departure and the quiet of the house. Then, she got up, tottered downstairs, poured the rest of the Amaretto into a flask, danced into her coat at the door, and left. A quick trip. No one would know.
The cemetery was four blocks from her parents’ house. The low chain link fence boxing in the burial ground was climbable. Izzy vaulted over the gate — there were no passing cars in this neighborhood at three something in the morning — and searched out Alan’s place. When she found it among the orderly rows of chalk white crosses and bronze placards, she plopped her drunk self down on the ground covered in a glittering, icy carpet. Grass crunched under her butt. She swigged from the flask and the alcohol, liquid candy, slipped over her tongue and throat like a syrupy glove. She toasted the grave and stared at it a long time — the simple cross, the empty iron vase at its foot, Alan Tunskill beloved son and brother — until a film of tears blurred her vision.
“You know, I always thought you were a better person than me.” Izzy didn’t bother keeping her voice down and it echoed over the well-kept park. “I thought if I’d been good you’d still be here. And I was angry. Angry you’d died a hero and I was left the helpless damsel. I was angry because I didn’t know if the situation had been reversed if I would have had the guts to do what you did and I’ve had a long, long time to think about that.” Tears poured like streams of fire down her cold cheeks.
“I never hated you, Alan. But I did hate me. Hated that I wasn’t good enough or courageous enough or,” she made a dismissive wave with the flask, “you know. Not all the things I thought only you could be. You were one way and I had to be the opposite, right? I could never be as wonderful as you, so I had to be the awful one, which was such a fucking cop out. None of it was true and I know now if it’d been you dragged off by some wolf, I would have come for you. I wouldn’t have run because I had the chance to at Keene Lodge and I didn’t.”
Not until later.
“I got that fucking Wolf King.” Izzy sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand, tipping the flask and washing the ground with a sparkling, amber stream. “I’ll try to be happy, but I miss you. I miss you so much.”
Lying on her stomach, Izzy wailed next to her brother’s grave, cried her eyes out until her nose grew so clogged with snot she couldn’t breathe and her eyes felt like dried raisins, all the moisture wept right out. She whispered into the sleeping earth, “I love you. I miss you,” and then up to the sky when she flopped on her back, “I love you. I miss you.” When she closed her eyes, she expected Alan’s face imprinted there behind her lids, but she didn’t see blue eyes when she shut her own. The eyes she saw were brown, crinkled at their corners with laugh lines. The discarded flask she found with a groping hand and she tilted the rest of its contents through her lips, her fingers and chin already sticky with the drink. The booze was warm like the warm expression reflected in those brown eyes and Izzy felt safe in the frost surrounded by peaceful spirits.
• • •
In mid-January, Izzy tired of misdirection. Her canker had downgraded back to a knot since her visit to Alan’s grave, but the damn knot wouldn’t loosen. She had to say something to someone about everything and babbling to a therapist about Werewolves was less likely to get her locked up than if she went off in public. Ignoring Dr. Turner’s usual pleasantries, she launched into the tale and went well over time. Dr. Turner didn’t stop her. She listened to Izzy, pad and pen cast aside.
“I don’t know what to do,” Izzy said, choked with emotion. “I shouldn’t feel so happy about that, should I? We killed a man.”
“Not a man.” Dr. Turner fidgeted with the crease of her trousers. “A Werewolf, a creature who would have killed you both if you hadn’t defended yourselves.” She tossed Izzy the box of tissues from the end table at her right.
Tearing several from the box, Izzy stopped up her eyes and nose. “The whole thing sounds crazy, I know, but the craziest thing is I miss Curtis. Actually miss him.” Relating her story had conjured a vivid image of Curtis. His large frame, hair in need of a trim, his I’ve-got-a-secret smile. No doubt about it. She had to be nuts. He was a Werewolf and the Alpha of his pack and one slip up in his speech would compel her to do whatever he pleased. A relationship with him? It would be hard. So much work. Was he even allowed to seriously date outside his species? She supposed the Alpha did what he pleased.
“Unfortunate, but not crazy,” Dr. Turner commented.
After a honking blow of her nose, Izzy said, “Isn’t that what shrinks say to all the whack jobs?”
Laughing Dr. Turner said, “Probably. You’ll have to trust you’re not one of them.” She raised her palm. “Hand to divinity. Someone in my profession doesn’t get this far without learning a lot of the city’s secrets. Did you think you were the only one who knew about Werewolves?”
Izzy blinked. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Dr. Turner’s chin dipped and she closed her eyes.
“Do you know how many there are?” Izzy asked.
“No. I know they, among other creatures of the aethervorlde, exist.”
“What other creatures?”
The dark haired woman fiddled with her heavy gold hoop earring and sized up her patient. “None you need to worry about as they’re not a threat. You don’t do well with surprises and we don’t need any more distractions from our work today. We can discuss the supernatural later.”
That tone Izzy recognized. Dr. Turner was about to take control of the session. But what was that she’d said? Aether-what?
“Why haven’t you called Curtis?” Dr. Turner asked.
Izzy opened her mouth and closed it. Her reason was pitiful.
“I don’t want to think about it anymore. Any of it. Alan, Thomas, my arm, none of it. And Curtis is right in the center.”
“It hurts thinking about those things.”
“It does.”
“But it hurts missing Curtis, doesn’t it? What good is avoidance? I recognize Keene Lodge is the symbolic source of the largest pains you’ve ever felt, but aren’t there other places of pain for you? Do you avoid all of them? Sooner or later you
wouldn’t be able to leave your apartment.”
Sinking into the cushy armchair, Izzy said, “I don’t know that I can go back again.”
“That’s certainly an option considering past and present circumstance. You’ll have to weigh the costs. Which is worse: confronting what happened at Keene Lodge and the baggage accompanying that or leaving what and who you love about that place behind?”
Izzy’s head snapped up. “I never said anything about love.”
“You didn’t have to,” Dr. Turner said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Snow crunched under Izzy’s boots as she trekked over Keene Lodge’s front lawn. Petey burst from the main house’s back porch tailed by a, for once, excitable Nook. The Samoyed spun circles when she approached and the husky stuck his head through the wood slats.
“Hi, guys,” she said and doled out the pats and behind-the-ear scratches. Hiking up to the enclosed front porch, she entered the cozy lobby.
Seated behind the front desk as always, Melinda sandwiched a phone between her shoulder and ear and a young man — he looked about Melinda’s age — used the counter as a leaning post. Melinda’s jaw dropped when the redhead saw Izzy and she frowned. The expression quickly melted into a very large grin. She waved and hurried off the line. Body repositioned to face Izzy, the young man squinted at her and slouched back. An air of carelessness surrounded him. On Curtis, this carelessness came across as easygoing, but on this man … his lazy stance paired with his sharp green eyes came as a silent challenge that Izzy did her best to shrug off.
“Didn’t think I’d see you again.” Melinda adjusted her bushy ponytail. “This is Danny.”
Eschewing niceties, Danny lifted his chin by way of hello.
“He’s our new part-time handyman slash receptionist and full-time pack mate.”
Izzy extended her hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m — ”
“Yeah, I know,” Danny said. “Pack ward.”